6 ms·
Fun thing about the carbon cycle, much of the candles mass goes into the air and much the mass of a tree comes from the air.
by SigmundA 6y ago
Fun thing about the carbon cycle, much of the candles mass goes into the air and much the mass of a tree comes from the air.
- AmericanChopper 6y agoMy mind was blown a little bit when I realized that when you lose fat, you do so by breathing it out. Some of which will also go on to make trees as well.
- ant6n 6y agoBut there’s also water generated when buying (edit:burning) carbo hydrates.
- s0rce 6y agoI assume you mean burning, but if you drive or even walk to the store to buy the carbs that also generates water.
- VanillaCafe 6y agoThe final bit that locked it in for me (and someone please correct me if this is wrong) is that going to the bathroom (which what many people assume is where weight leaves the body) is actually the last stage of "energy input" to the body and doesn't really play a role in "energy output".
- semi-extrinsic 6y agoWell, your body does not utilize all the energy it could from the food and drink you ingest. Say if you get a condition where your digestive efficiency goes down - tapeworm, inflammation, whatever - all else equal, you're going to start losing weight fast. This is why gastric bypass surgery works.
- anm89 6y agoI don't understand what you are saying here. The physical weight of the feces does leave your body. How is that an input?
- markdown 6y agoIt's the end of the input. Think about it another way... say you chew on a slice of orange, swallow the juice, and spit out the pith. The pith isn't output of your body. It's just the end of the intake process. Feaces isn't produced by your metabolic system. It's just the byproduct of intake. The stuff that your body didn't absorb.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoFeces may not be produced by your metabolic system, but it is certainly not just a byproduct of intake. It includes red blood cells that have failed quality assurance and been filtered out of the bloodstream by the spleen; that is why it's brown.
- yesenadam 6y agoNot long ago I googled why shit and piss are two things and not one. It just suddenly seemed odd to me one day. The answer seemed to be that the stuff we poo out never goes 'inside' our body. Imagining our bodies being like a tube or doughnut, what goes in our mouths just goes through the hole, staying in a sense on the outside. What comes out is just what we couldn't use as it passed along the conveyor belt. Piss, on the other hand, is the waste from (truly) inside us. Hmm seems there are (at least) two levels of 'inside' here. It's quite a weird, topological subject hehe. It seems odd that we don't intuitively think of those as different degrees of insideness.
- Izkata 6y agoTherefore, trees are fat. ;)
- notJim 6y agoCheekily, this also means that if you're losing weight, you are a net emitter of CO2, thus hastening global warming. On the other hand, if you gain weight, you are a net sink. Of course the carbon cost of food production does… complicate this a little bit :)
- InitialLastName 6y agoThe balance evens out pretty quickly on the other end though. Does anyone know if crematoriums do carbon capture?
- ashtonkem 6y agoIIRC, you urinate a decent chunk of it out too.
- raffraffraff 6y agoHey snap! I just posted the same thing before I read your post!
- jedimastert 6y ago> much the mass of a tree comes from the air A fun pastime of mine is asking people where they think the mass of a tree comes from and trying to guide them to the right answer (CO2) via the socratic method (i.e. trying to only ask questions)
- tomjakubowski 6y agoI was wondering how much of a tree's mass is not Carbon or Oxygen. Turns out it's somewhere around 10%; half of that is light weight hydrogen. So water probably provides a decent chunk of a tree's oxygen content also. Page 4 https://www.urban-forestry.com/assets/documents/Coder_Tree%20Elements%20Pub%20I.pdf https://www.urban-forestry.com/assets/documents/Coder_Tree%2...
- colineartheta 6y agoNobody might ever tell you this, but you’re probably the reason they hate science AND philosophy.
- salamanderman 6y agoYour comment was awful, and completely unnecessary. It feels mean for the sake of being mean. Take a child to Muir Woods, and see them stare in awe at the massive trees. Then, ask them where the mass of the tree comes from. When they figure out it comes from the air, their minds are blown and filled with more wonder than before. Please don't tell people they should feel bad for spreading their knowledge and joy to others.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- raffraffraff 6y agoI also love the idea that when you exercise more and lose weight, you shed the body mass by breathing out co2.
- lathiat 6y ago"Where do trees get their mass?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZb2_vcNTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZb2_vcNTg This was highly enlightening the first time I watched it :)